Using up leftover cheese

Macaroni and Cheese
Better Homes and Gardens Heritage Cook Book Copyright 1975

1 ½ cups elbow macaroni I used Dreamfields
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
2 cups cubed sharp American cheese I used a mixture of leftover cheese
½ cup finely chopped onion (optional) I didn't add this
1 tomato, sliced

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water till tender; drain. In saucepan melt butter; blend in flour, ½ teaspoon salt and dash pepper. Add milk; cook and stir till thickened and bubbly. Add cheese and onion, if desired; cook and stir till cheese melts. Mix cheese sauce with macaroni. Turn into 1 ½ quart casserole. Sprinkle tomato slices with salt; arrange atop macaroni. Bake at 350 degrees till heated through, 35 to 40 minutes. (Well, you just mixed hot cheese sauce with hot macaroni - it's already heated through. Just bake until bubbly and as browned as you like it. I was in a hurry so mine isn't as browned as I would have preferred.)

Makes 6 servings.
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I had a bunch of cheese leftover from the cookout. I only bought one average-sized looking tray of sliced cheese from Costco which didn't look very big but the slices were huge so I cut them in half and ended up with a huge tray of cheese. There was sharp cheddar, havarti, gouda and Swiss on there. To make this cheese disappear, I pulled out this old recipe that I've used several times over the years. I made 1 1/2 times the recipe for the cheese sauce and used an entire box of macaroni. I thought that would use up all the cheese and I could freeze some but there was barely enough left to fill one small container.

My son and husband really seemed to like this. Personally I preferred the Horn and Hardart version I made a while back but I think if I used the same cheese blend in this recipe, they would be very similar (except for the tomato being on top in this one and blended into the H&H recipe).

This is probably one of my very favorite cookbooks, although I haven't cooked from it nearly enough. They start with the Indians (I think they were still calling Native Americans Indians in 1975) and work their way, recipe by recipe, all through the history of America. There are also sections on cookbooks, appliances, how we shop for food, etc. Since America is made up of people from so many different countries and cultures, they also included quite a variety of ethnic recipes - Italian, Irish, Japanese, Jewish, Russian, Mexican, etc. There are over 700 recipes!

Question of the Day: What is your favorite cheese?